Vibration is the oscillation of a component around a central or equilibrium point and it is generally characterized by frequency, amplitude and phase. Vibration constitutes a very important aspect of any dynamic or mechanical system. Frequency measurement of vibrating bodies helps in dynamic characterization of the system. Frequency measurement may also necessary in constituting passive control to identify and mitigate vibration related machine health hazards. If displacement is large enough, as at low frequencies, it can be measured with a scale, calipers, or a measuring microscope. At higher frequencies, displacement measurement requires more sophisticated optical techniques. High-speed movies and video can often be used to measure displacements and are especially valuable for visualizing the motion of complex structures and mechanisms.
Strobe lights and stroboscopic photography are useful when displacements are large enough. Stroboscope also known as a strobe, is an instrument used to make a cyclically moving object appear to be slow-moving, or stationary. It consists of either a rotating disk with slots or holes or a lamp such as a flashtube which produces brief repetitive flashes of light. Usually the rate of the stroboscope is adjustable to different frequencies. When a rotating or vibrating object is observed with the stroboscope at its vibration frequency (or a submultiple of it), it appears stationary. Thus stroboscopes are also used to measure frequency.
However the traditional systems and methods, even those using stroboscopic methodology to detect vibrations only provide for non-contact vibration measurement technique with very high cost of measuring vibrations. Further, there is a large computation time involved when detecting vibrating frequencies. Still further and most importantly, none of the traditional systems and methods have provided for detecting multi-frequency component of vibration. The traditional systems and methods also do not provide for multiple frequency vibration detection at different locations of the machine quickly and optimally.
Hence there is a need for technology which can detect multi frequency component of a vibrating object quickly and efficiently, that can provide for an autonomous stroboscopic machine inspection and detect the vibrations of a machine at different locations.